Welcome to the weekly news roundup! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry. Lots of news outside of the U.S. in this edition.

Monday: Germany reaches record number of temporary workers, nearing one million. (Staffing Industry Analysts Daily News)

Tuesday: Which country has the highest percentage of teleworkers? You might be surprised by the answer. (GigaOm)

Tuesday: The Five laws that cause contingent labor challenges. (HR Daily Advisor)

Wednesday: Did you catch up on all the news out of Staffing Industry Analysts this week? Don’t miss the article on how retirees are turning to temporary work. (CWS 3.0)

Wednesday: AWR has had little effect on temporary labor demand in the UK… so far. (SIA Daily News)

Today: Assembling a contingent workforce of 180,000 for London Olympic Games. (Recruiter Magazine UK)

Did you see anything else this week that we should have covered here?

Welcome to the weekly news roundup! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry.

Monday: For our readers Down Under with an interest in the mining industry, here’s a great recap of 2011’s top ten stories. (Australian Mining)

Monday: This article says that significant contingent labor use can help overcome challenges in today’s VUCA environment. (ERE.net)

Tuesday: Are you ready for some football? SuperBowl 2012 is driving temporary labor in Indianapolis. (Indy Star)

Tuesday: Is full-time employment a thing of the past? (FOX Business)

Tuesday: Subadhra Sriram thinks that the Pandora’s Box of misclassification has been opened. (SIA Blogs)

Wednesday: Another expert takes on the AWR’s influence on contingent workers. (Procurement Leaders)

Friday: Today’s issue of Staffing Today is now available. (ASA)

Did you see anything else this week worth noting?

For those of you who attended today’s Staffing Industry Analysts’ webinar, Getting Ready for 2012 – along with some great insights about what to expect in 2012 – you may have Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror swirling around in your head. You are not alone.

What will 2012 bring to our industry? I’m not sure it’s black or white. However, I think we all agree on a few points:

Our industry will have some unique challenges this year. How do you plan to stay ahead of the demands of your clients and competitors? Are you equipped to support this global explosion? Do we as a VMS dust off and re-visit our ATS capabilities? Do you know all the industry acronyms?

Last week’s webinar recording is now available! Anyone who has doubts that this industry of forward-thinking trailblazers can’t get off the wall and rise to the occasion, I say beat it.

Welcome to the weekly news roundup! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry.

Monday: Think we’re headed towards a 50-50 split between a traditional & contingent workforce? This article says so. (Small Business Trends)

Tuesday: Saw this older article tweeted this week. It’s a great refresher on understanding the differences between temporary workers, contractors, and freelancers. (Helium)

Thursday: A tragedy brings misclassification to the forefront; Illegal worker misclassification too is common and too costly. (Stamford Advocate)

Today: Chicago business blogger gives us advice on how to build the best management team for your start-up. (Crain’s)

Also, don’t forget to check out two new posts up on our own blog this week. Arjun Dutt discusses how one Company Saves Thousands by Better Preventing Overtime Errors, while Toni Jackson covers Solving the Independent Contractor Classification Issue, One Worker at a Time.

Today’s guest post is by Toni Jackson, Fieldglass company director.

The problem: It’s no secret that misclassification of workers has expensive ramifications. With the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) under severe pressure to increase revenue, Australian companies that utilise contingent labor and independent contractors are in an even riskier situation. The ATO is set to formally enforce worker classification laws and aggressively ramp up audits to ensure that all independent contractors are compliant. Unless organisations can easily classify and track their non-traditional workforce correctly, this has a potential price tag worth millions to the ATO.

The solution: Fieldglass customers have access to a fully integrated solution to ensure workers are properly classified. Before a job posting or Statement of Work is created, hiring managers first complete a decision form, answering a series of questions that can be customised to include government-mandated information. This creates the compliance framework for which all non-traditional workers are to be engaged. All engagements are reviewed and workers are vetted by experienced internal teams, the Master Service Provider (MSP), or one of several external independent contractor compliance companies that have specific expertise.

The result: All work and workers are classified correctly from the outset, and alerts and warnings are set up to ensure compliance with licenses, insurance, visa tenure and qualifications. All processes and information can be stored within the Fieldglass solution, leaving a full audit trail. Companies can retrieve all this documentation easily. To date, nearly a dozen Fieldglass customers are successfully using this process to ensure 100% compliance to various classification regulations, therefore reducing costs and mitigating risks associated with misclassification of workers.

Today’s guest post is by Arjun Dutt, Business Intelligence Solutions.

The problem: One Fieldglass customer realized that, on average, 4-5% of its invoices needed to be adjusted for inefficiency. A majority of these were due to incorrect overtime hours entered by the worker, and missed by the manager. In addition to paying out extra overtime, the program office also suffered lower productivity due to the necessary manual review time.

The solution: The customer implemented timesheet overtime rules within the Fieldglass solution. With these rules in place, workers are alerted when they attempt to enter time that is not compliant with federal or state guidelines for overtime entry. The solution then prevents them from submitting their timesheets until they make the appropriate corrections.

The results: The customer was able to greatly improve its invoice accuracy, and anticipated to fall to only 1-1.5% inefficiency of all its invoices. In addition, the program office was able to save approximately one hour a week, or 52 hours a year, by no longer having to review all submitted timesheets and adjust them for errors. Lastly, the customer was able to use the Fieldglass solution to help enforce compliance to federal and state overtime entry guidelines.

Welcome to the first weekly news roundup of 2012! Below are the top stories we’ve read or shared this week affecting our industry.

Tuesday: New Staffing Industry Analysts’ survey reports that buyers are planning to increase their use of contingent workers by 26% within the next two years. Does your company? (SIA Daily News)

Tuesday: G+, a new business Q&A site, released a graphic outlining the top technology trends of 2011. Pretty neat graphic. (ZDNet)

Wednesday: The rise of contingent labor makes Littler’s list of eight trends for global employers. (Digital Journal)

Wednesday: Interesting post by industry expert Vinnie Mirchandani on the future of work and workers, especially the technology gap between generations that together make up our workforce. (Deal Architect)

Wednesday: ASA’s latest newsletter, Staffing Today, covers the top jobs news, including an increase in temp hiring. (Staffing Today)

Today: Great news today from the monthly jobs report… the December unemployment rate was 8.5% – the lowest it has been since February 2009. (CNBC)

Have we missed anything? Please share in comments.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Today’s guest post is by Brandin Lubert, a Fieldglass operations consultant.

Even customers of more than a decade continue to evolve their use of the Fieldglass solution to enable better, faster, more strategic contingent labor management.

The problem: A longtime Fieldglass customer noticed that many documents failed to be approved until after the established deadline date. The company’s initial solution was to run daily (time-consuming) reports to remind managers of impending deadlines, but these reminders often reached the managers past the deadline. As a result, managers were behind in several key tasks, including approving time for workers within the application.

The solution: The client needed an easy way to view pending approvals in real-time. By enabling the Program Management Office (PMO) Dashboard within the Fieldglass solution, the customer was able to set pre-determined thresholds that meet the company’s policy for approvals. Now, the program office team – in this case, the company’s Master Service Provider – can easily send multiple reminder emails directly from the tool to those managers that may have forgotten or are late in their approval actions, without having to run a single report.

The results: Not only does the PMO Dashboard help ensure compliance from a corporate standpoint, but it also ensures that suppliers are able to pay workers on approved time without any delays. The company has had so much success with the functionality that they have expanded their use to monitor even more activities, including cycle times.

As 2011 comes to close, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for visiting our blog. We look forward to bringing you more user stories, industry news, and expert interviews in the coming year. To show our appreciation, please enjoy a very Fieldglass rendition of the “12 Days of the Holiday Season.”

Welcome to our weekly news roundup!

Monday: 63% of UK CFOs plan to add temporary finance workers in 2012, via new research from Robert Half UK. Despite changing working practices such as the AWR, London-based companies in particular are taking full advantage of temporary labor, with four in five CFOs planning to increase their teams next year. (SIA Daily News)

Monday: New Mom Corps research shows that 42% of working adults surveyed are willing to give up some percentage of their salary for more flexibility at work. Are you one of them? (Star Global Tribune)

Tuesday: With NINE straight quarters of employment growth, the Manpower Employment Outlook Survey reports the most promising U.S. hiring outlook since 2008. (MarketWatch)

Tuesday: Great blog post by Hinda Chalew on the importance of communication in facilitating better, more informed decisions around contingent labor. (Staffing Industry Analysts blog)

Wednesday: More companies are looking to deploy and better manage contingent labor in Asia-Pacific (APAC), but the lack of maturity of the contingent workforce market makes it difficult to establish a program. This article helps explain some of the nuances associated with managing temps in APAC. (CWS 30)

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